May 19, 2005

• “How long before I get in? before it starts? before I begin? How long before you decide or before I know what it feels like? Where to, where do I go? If you never try then you’ll never know. How long do I have to climb up on the side of this mountain of mine?” (Coldplay).
  

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  Sorry for the lack of recent xanga life. I’ve been lax on my posting and subscription reading.

  Things are finally starting to pick up. I went to lunch with Jori on Tuesday, which was really fun. I hadn’t really seen her since graduation, so it was great to catch up with her. We went to Potbelly and talked about college and the Book of Mormon comic book and family, etc.

  Then yesterday I went and visited SHS, which was really nice. It was great running into everyone and catching up with teachers and friends. I was glad I caught Mr. Twadell and got to catch up with him. It was also nice seeing Ms. Heckle-O and Ms. Smith. And Jennie. ()

  You know I really miss everyone from BYU a lot. (Yes even this crazy kid). Anyway. Today I went and saw James’ choir concert and stopped by PAC to say hi to Susan and Saltzman. It’s been a great few days, but I have to say I am in a mood to rant despite it. I’m really frustrated with work, but I’m going to rant about something else so I don’t really loose it.

  The past few days Fox’s A Current Affair has been doing shows on a polygamous group in Colorado City and Eldorado Texas. I have been frustrated by the misconceptions the show has fostered. First of all, because the group has absolutely no affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founded by Joseph Smith, it is inappropriate to call refer to these Polygamous groups as Mormons. (according to the Associated Press Guidelines). It also irks me to death that FOX want’s you to believe that these people are a glimpse of what Latter-day Saints were in 1850. That is just historically wrong. The polygamy of the so called FLDS in Colorado City and Eldorado Texas and other similar groups is absolutely nothing like the polygamy of Brigham Young and the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  Polygamy was not something that hurt women. It actually gave them freedoms that women did not experience out east during the same time period. Think about it. If a man has four wives, think about what that would mean for those wives. It would mean 8 hands doing dishes, not 2 or even 4. Women in plural marriages had more spare time for their pursuits. With a shared work load, things were done sooner and so they had more time. In a way polygamy is the ultimate feminist lifestyle. Is it really a wonder that the Mormons were some of the first to establish women’s suffrage, or that when plural marriage hit the ballot box it was the women who showed overwhelming support for it? This was not some barbaric, twisted sexual deviance, this was the way that the west was tamed, colonized, and found success.

  Look at Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon. She was one of 6 wives to an LDS leader. She was the first woman senator in the USA. She won elections as a Democrat that her husband lost as a Republican. How? Polygamy. Plural marriage enabled her to pursue education and career success. She is famous for saying, “You show me a woman who thinks about something besides cookstoves and washtubs and baby flannels, and I will show you nine times out of ten a successful mother.” And this isn’t an isolated case. Look up Emmeline Blanch Wells, Jane Richards, Sarah M. Kimball, Lucinda Lee Dalton, Reva Stevens Daniels Smoot, or Zina D. H. Young.

  FLDS leader Warren Jeffs and his associates are monsters. I am abhorred by the practices they do in secrecy, specifically the abuse. Real 19th century LDS plural marriage was not something that ever endorsed or even bred abuse. In fact it was a way out of abuse. Take for example Laura Farnsworth Frampton Owen and Martha Spence Heywood, both women who escaped an abusive marriage out east, crossed the plains, and married good husbands as plural wives in Utah.

  The polygamy of Jeff Warren’s is just not the same as the plural marriages done in LDS history. We tend to have this false image in our minds of a deviant man with 20 wives, some of them underage and all locked to the stove, slaving away for a hundred kids all to please the appetites of a man. And what’s worse is that Mormons in general don’t know enough about their history to dispel this image. My great grandfather was a real LDS polygamist. Let me tell you how it really is, what it really was like. He had four wives, yes only four. They were all adults when he wed them. He provided for them until the day the US government arrested him and threw his kids on the street. Yes, he was jailed. Why? Because he was faithful. I’m not talking about being faithful to his Church, I mean he was faithful to his wives. The government said that he had to leave three of his four wives, and that their children were illegitimate. (we’re talking anti-cohabitation laws/acts) He stuck by all of his wives, refusing to abandon any of them, and was thrown in jail and persecuted despite the fact that he had married all four of them before it was illegal to do so. My great grandfather ought to be pardoned. It sickens me that his heroic faithfulness tarnished his good name and made him criminal.

  Personally I think it’s a shame that so many Latter-day Saints are so embarrassed and down right ignorant of the plural marriages of their ancestors. I am proud of polygamy. I believe that it was God-inspired. I do not endorse it today because God Himself asked us not to, but I will take pride in our early leaders and the plural marriages they had. This was something that about 20% of LDS people at the time practiced, including most Church leaders. I support them and their memories. I believe that in its time period polygamy was exactly what the Church and the west needed.
  

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  “Stand in the place where you live (Now face north). Think about direction, Wonder why you haven’t … Now stand in the place where you work (Now face west). Think about the place where you live, Wonder why you haven’t before” (R.E.M.).

  • 11:59 pm
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